Thursday September 6, 2001 • Howard Tayler

Thanks go out to all of you who offered me a Mac adapter. As it turns out, I have a loyal reader within the walls of my very own day-job employer (that would be Novell, the leading provider of Net services software) who has offered me one which I can walk and pick up. In fact, I think I'll do that today. I could use the exercise.

In other news, I had a very rough, very emotional weekend, and I'm not going tell you about it in any level of detail. Suffice it to say that at no point was Schlock Mercenary at any sort of risk. Although I did get angry enough to script a plotline in which all the characters died. But that would not be a risk to the strip, would it?

Before you email me in a panic (or to offer emotional support), rest assured that I know that the characters are the primary strength of this comic. How do I know? They tell me so, these voices in my head. They've got their own ideas about which way they want to go, and as some of you have noted, it seems to have resulted in a little bit of strife in the strip. Oh well... such is life. Sometimes people say unkind things, and do stuff that they later regret, but they just have to move on. It gets a little bit more complicated when those people have contol of weapons of mass destruction, but looked at from another angle, maybe it's simpler. Ahhh... so much simpler.

One or two of you out there may still be panicking. And that makes me smile way down deep inside. After all, if you are only 90% sure that Your Favorite Character is going to live through the next storyline, you are going to be stuck to the edge of your seat, tuning in the moment my strip updates (usually between 10:15 and 11:00 Mountain Time), and that puts you squarely in the middle of my happy place.

Ahhh, the power of creation. And destruction. What a glorious thing is a web-comic. I'm going to go take my medication now.